JohnBirshire wrote on Oct 29, 2010, 20:04:I, contrary to popular opinion, actually loved the first Force Unleashed. I thought it had fun combat, the force powers were a blast *I loved picking people up with force choke then impaling them with a lightsaber*, you visited many worlds from the Star Wars mythos, it was fun fighting Jedi as boss battles, and the story was good and made perfect sense.

I hated the controls. Unless they changed it - the demo (on xbox36) would prompt you for a button input while in the middle of a button mashing slap fest of a fight.

Did they ever fix that mechanic? I would fail it every time, as the cut screen would pop up and the button would appear instantly without warning. That happened a few times and I deleted it. Never looked back.

I, contrary to popular opinion, actually loved the first Force Unleashed. I thought it had fun combat, the force powers were a blast *I loved picking people up with force choke then impaling them with a lightsaber*, you visited many worlds from the Star Wars mythos, it was fun fighting Jedi as boss battles, and the story was good and made perfect sense.

However, Force Unleashed 2 was horrible. There were literally 4 enemies that you fought the entire game, the boss fights were terrible, you only visited roughly 3 worlds, the Vader battle was anticlimatic, the game was over in 4 hours, and the story was non existent. The only part of the "game" I enjoyed was the cinematic trailers, which ironically were never in the game itself. Instantly forgettable.

You should really play FO3 with Fallout 3 Traveler Edition and MMM (martigens monster mod) + xCalibr + Lings (if you play a female char, that is or generally dislike how fallout never gets the women and hair right) + all the DLC + Type 3 (or 5) Body replacer needed for Lings. Though once you do you will NEVER want to go back to the unmodded stock game

Deathclaws are not the top end of the spectrum, after level 15~ (when you finally get power armor and the REALLY sweet energy weapons in FO3 with these mods) you start meeting super mutant enclave troopers, Deathclaw Alphas in ARMOR, HellFire Commandos (Use Plasma Flame Throwers) and random drops of enclave trooper squads (like more than 3 guys) hunting you with dropships. Or you are ambushed by 30+ ghouls at night.

A common problem in FO3 is that most people never actually see the coolest stuff, because they never rest 4 days straight (its the default reset timer) I actually rested the full reset time after reaching lvl 15 so that every location i had visited was refreshed with the updated loot/enemies. Even in the mods there is "soft-leveling" which means that only at level 12-15 you start seeing the full range of encounters (including elite commandos that can snipe you and an enemy ai that can flank, throw grenades and make your life hell if you are not careful).

If I have one complaint about NV (bugs aside,) it is a slightly decreased amount of "large" areas. When you do stumble into them (like vault 34,) you wish this game had a few more, but F3 just had a number of really long, barren areas (sewers, numerous buildings, train stations, etc.)

I certainly have a wide range of guns now, but I don't have five pristine backups for each one of them. Likewise, ammo is a tad more limited - yeah, I have enough to last for quite some time, but it isn't the endless amount I had in F3. Same thing with the caps; I have funding for anything I want at this point (to say nothing of the 20+ packs of C-4,) but I am no longer a walking bank.

I think that's the biggest thing F3 was lacking - it wasn't quite as coherent and you were quickly clad in full armor with pristine versions of the most high tech weapons. Deathclaw? Pssshhhh - I'd kill one in two hits and it would die long before VATS ended. In this game, they would one-shot me early on. Now, I can deal with them, but it generally isn't worth the time or ammo to do so.

Bugs aside, the things I felt were heavy handed in F3 have all generally been scaled back in NV.Heck, I even like the addition of the companions. Even if they hav crap Ai.Having picked up the explorer perk; having quite a bit of stuff to look at,Ray

Great game. With the new ATI focused .dll fix hack and the new ATI drivers, i'm getting far better fps. It's certainly more polished and my playing it on hard/hardcore brings some challenge. The graphics are very nice with 4xAA on. gotta go

There is a decreased amount of weapons. It wasn't until like 4 hours in I found something better than a varmint rifle, for chrissake. But there's a much better variety, anyways; in FO3 I used the hunting rifle for 90% of the game. Now theres a bunch of pistols, a few smgs, a bunch of shotguns etc etc. But weight is a big issue in HC mode. It's extremely necessary to have ED-E or Boone or somebody else around to be your packmule.

Anyways, it's definitely an improvement over FO3. While FO3 had its moments, a lot of the areas felt cut-and-paste. NV gives you a few small caves with some minor loot in them, but areas for the most part have at least a modicum of personality about them. And the integration of SPECIAL into most any conversation was something sorely missing from FO3.

I'm really looking forward to mods for this as well. There's some great FO3 mods out there, and I hope to see them make it to FONV. Maybe I'll learn how to play Caravan tonight. I wasn't even sure what keys do what when I first tried it, so I couldn't pick a card to discard or anything like that. I gave up on it and haven't even tried since.

This comment was edited on Oct 29, 2010, 16:45.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell (I think...)

I think I'm carrying 16 different kinds of ammo and I have 11 types of guns with me. That's just guns, not energy weapons. I have four of those.

To be honest, I liked the big expansive areas you could find in FO3. You'd go into a building somewhere and it'd be four levels of ghoul infested death-trap.

Here you find something and it's typically one room with 2 giant rats in it.

Still having a good time, but it's far more quest heavy, and far less "explore and you'll find cool stuff".

As for caps, eh. I had 35,000 by the time I came to Vegas. I bought 20K worth of kick-ass weapons from the gun runners, then made 34K by busting the 3 casinos in about an hour and a half of playing blackjack.

the voice actingÖ the voice acting. I donít even know where to begin. It resembles something out of the early Playstation days where the developers brought in janitors and assistants to voice characters. Itís ugly. Itís bad. The dialogue is forced and makes it very hard to take the story seriously.

But give a Very Good (B+) for Sound even though its 99% Dialog and 1% Music (like seriously, you have to literally turn of the music to hear some of the dialog)... game review scores are a mystery to me.

I think Obsidian made a number of terrific gameplay choices (scaled back caps, decreased abundance of weapons and aid items, more of a focus on non-mechanical enemies, less pointlessly sprawling sewers and vaults, gradual learning curve, etc.) but the tech side of the game can be really problematic.Though I wish my high level gun skills did a bit more for me.The first game had some tech issues, but I was able to get around them or they were much more identifiable (don't open that pack unless you want to crash...) whereas this game is entirely inconsistent.

With some patches or some community love, this game will be the best of both worlds.

New Vegas has a good story. It more closely resembles FO1 and FO2 than FO3. If you are a graphics whore you will grumble a lot because the game graphics haven't changed much (if any) from FO3. They reused assets and added some new ones in, just like they said they were going to do in interviews (I don't get how people complain about this when they were warned).

The game is also pretty glitchy just like all Obsidian releases. It still uses the Gamebryo engine just like Oblivion and FO3.

I'm having a really good time with it, but it is not without bugs. If you can wait until Christmas or so it'll probably have some of the most annoying bugs ironed out and you might find it on discount.